THANK YOU, PHILIP OWEN, YOU WILL BE MISSED

Backroom boys at the NPA have done the city no favour in ousting a capable
and caring long-serving mayor

Vancouver woke up a poorer city Tuesday. Poorer because it is losing its
seasoned, even-handed mayor. Poorer because Mayor Philip Owen appears the
victim of an old-boys', behind-the-scenes backstabbing of the most odious kind.

With his Walter Cronkite-like looks, corporate but caring ways and love for
his city, he was just the sort of diplomat to be at the helm of the city as
it goes after the 2010 Winter Olympics.

No one would ever accuse Mr. Owen, Vancouver's longest-serving mayor, of
having rock-star status or the ability to woo audiences with poetic turns
of phrase.

But he was the type of mayor who would bend down in his business suit while
returning home from a civic function and gather wet paper, cardboard, the
detritus of mean city streets, into a tidy pile, then continue on his way.

Just as he would gather down-and-outers in his arms and wish them well when
one of them had managed to shake a drug habit.

He cared. He really did.

Preoccupied by the small stuff, like the potholes and the pawnshops, a
champion of church and community, Mr. Owen was often perceived as being too
small-townish, too much of a ribbon-cutting kind of mayor for a city as big
and as bustling as Vancouver. The three-term mayor was accused of lacking
vision and leadership qualities, of allowing councillors and bureaucrats to
run the show.

Too bad. Have we reached such a low point in our civic lives when being
pleasant, decent and listening to people aren't valued any more?

If a little colourless and plodding at times, he was a listener, a
conciliator, considerate, gracious, scrupulously honest and self-effacing,
which made him liked -- no, loved -- by those who worked at city hall.

At the same time, he managed to maintain the crucially important close ties
to both provincial and federal governments.

As with many politicians, there was more to the man than meets the eye.

Behind the avuncular exterior was a man who had the guts to come up with a
strategy that accepted the drug-addled denizens of the city's forlorn
Downtown Eastside for who they are -- the poor, the sick and the vulnerable
- -- instead of as criminals who should be rounded up by police and put
behind bars.

But it was his four-pillar approach to the area, advocating experimentation
with safe-injection sites, prevention and treatment, that was his undoing.

A cabal of business owners in Gastown and Chinatown, fearful of drawing
more of the downtrodden into their area, rejected that approach. They are
also thought to be being behind a putsch mounted by the ruling Non-Partisan
Association, a party Mr. Owen ably served for 25 years.

The NPA has much to answer for. In this nefarious affair, it has lived up
to its reputation as a secretive organization of backroom boys who eat
their own. Capable former NPA councillors Nancy Chiavario and Alan Herbert
were forced out before the last election.

It is now incumbent upon this group to come up with a mayor who can lead
this city down the challenging road ahead.

Sadly, the signposts do not look promising.

NPA Councillor Jennifer Clarke is known to have been longingly eying the
mayor's chair. But to this, we ask, "Jennifer who?"

Ms. Clarke doesn't seem to have stood out on any issue. While she has a
reputation of being a good communicator, she is hardly a household name.

More worrisome, the NPA looks like a rudderless party, with many of its
most capable councillors either departing or on the verge of it.

Given its close ties to the governing Liberal party in Victoria, there
could be a tendency on the part of voters to blame the NPA for some of the
provincial government's least popular policies.

That leaves the centre-left Coalition of Progressive Electors as an
alternative. It has yet to demonstrate that it can pull together a credible
team of candidates that includes more than NDP has-beens.

Perhaps strong, independent candidates will move in to fill the void. We
hope so.

But in the meantime, there is one man who will be sorely missed everywhere
from the council chambers, to the corporate boardrooms, to the sorry
streets of the Downtown Eastside.

He is Mr. Owen. To you, we say thank you.